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Portable Radios- One For Each Crew Member or Do You Have to Share Them?
Several months ago, my F.D. updated our portable radios so that each seating position had it's own portable radio. We were able to do this due to a grant. This ensures that each crew member on that rig has his/her own radio. This has greatly improved safety and communication. I was just wondering what other F.D's, (from big city to small town) are doing.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Craig Newland on
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Im on a very small department with 14 on the roster and about half of us active,operate off of a budget of about $5k a year and everyone has a portable radio.Not everyone carries it but they have it.There is no reason not to have a radio.Like said before, your s.o.'s and p.d.'s update all the time.We have gotten hand me downs from the s.o. ,grants for new and gotten like new from government surplus. This goes to show that no matter how small your roster and budget everyone can get a radio. This will all change later this year when we go to the 800Mhz system that is coming out,and is a nightmare for a small department like mine.
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Permalink Reply by Jerrid Lavoie on
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I come from a small department with about 50 members and we have to share radios, we have at least one in each one of our 7 trucks and our rescue has 4, one of the first due engines has 2 but we recently got a grant and have several more radios on the way. I can't wait until more of our members are equipped with them, it just makes things alot easier on the fire ground.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Muma on
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I am in a small, rural volunteer department. In our area, for years, it was common practice for all fire depts. that only officers had portables and everyone else had a pager. There were not portables on the apparatus because the mentality was, " Only the officers needed to talk on scene". Last year, with the help of a grant, our dept. decided that instead of buying pagers we would buy nothing but portables. This has greatly improved the safety of interior crews as well all around communications on any scene. I would have to say that I agree wiht most of the replies I have read on this topic. You would never catch me working interior without my own radio. As a matter of fact, long before my dept. ever issued me a portable radio I went and bought my own. Pretty cheap when you consider the alternative.
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Permalink Reply by rick bettes on
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we issue radios to all 25 of our members
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we issue radios to all 25 of our members
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Permalink Reply by James on
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I work for a 911 ALS provider in Las Vegas and we only get one portable radio per ambulance. We also have a portable radio that we do all of our radio telemetry with, in theory it can also talk to fire and other agencies in our area; we only have one of those too. In my opinion we need at least a portable radio per crew member, it seems that is everyone else's feeling as well.
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Permalink Reply by Greg aka "Slim" on
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I work for a dept full time as well as one thats all vol. All members on both departments has an radio issued to them or avaible for them to use when doing a part time shift where Im full time.
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Permalink Reply by kevin elsass on
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Our volunteer dept. has a large turnover rate, with very little resources. We issue handhelds to members whos longevity and proven dedication to the dept ensures us that the radio will be properly used and not abused. Other than that, our first out stucture fire engine is equiped with a charger holding 6 handhelds. We wanted to do the same with our new rescue engine, but the radios we have for it are the motorola pr400, and the bank charger we looked into purchasing was way too bulky, not condensed and handy like the older model bank chargers, so those radios sit on individual chargers at the station, and are grabbed on a first come first serve basis when responding.
Kevin Elsass, Port Jefferson Community Fire Co., Shelby County Ohio.
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Permalink Reply by Randy Bawks on
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I am also on a small rural volunteer dept.We have six officers who have portables,thats it. I am one of the lucky six, and since it is normally the six of us plus another handful of fire fighters who show up to calls,normally I am very involved in fire ground operations. So in a nut shell I'm happy that I have a radio and I dont share it.
Randy Bawks,Pickford Fire Dept.,Pickford Michigan.
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Permalink Reply by Wolfy Lang on
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If I may make a suggestion... as most other departments I have seen use the following... Engine 1 Driver, Engine 1 Capt, Engine 1 Rider 1, Engine 1 Rider 2 .. .using ABCD can sure be confusing when its also used to describe sides of a building... Not sure if there is a NIMS/ICS format for it.. but most major cities and even us smaller Vol Dept's use this format... just to make sure of interoperability with other counties/agencies/departments...
Just a pair of pennies...
Wolfy
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Permalink Reply by Jeffrey Zorn on
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my dept is a Volunteer Dept from a smaller upstate ny town. We have about 25 active members. We have 2 engines, 1 ladder each seats 5 people. We also have a ford pick up that seats 5 and a Bread truck type van that seats 6. We have a total of 3 radios on each Engine including the ladder. We find that this is plenty as when working an interrior attack or rescue that as we work in a group of at least 2 so each group of 2 has a radio. For the ladder we use the portables in place of the built in headset intercom as this is a older ladder and the sytem is older to and we experience issues. The main issues are with the contact rings on the turntable not always contacting right. We have found using radios are more effeciant. For the ladder there is 1 radios for the bucket, 1 for the turn table operator and 1 for the pump pannel operator. For out pick up which is mainly just used for fire police of to transpot personell to the sceen and traing ect we have 2 portables. And Finaly the van which is also used primarly to transport personel and for fire police when needed has 2 portables. We have found that sometimes when we have many personel with radios working clos to eachothjer as we sometimes do you cant use a radio without getting feedback.
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Suggestion... EBAY... I have bought MTX8000 800 MHZ portables for as low as 36 bucks... the last two spectra's I bought were under 100 each... with the rebanding that is going on nationwide due to SPRINT taking over a chunk of the band and 800's going to 900 mhz, there will be a flood of radios on the market... just make sure that your system is going to STAY 800....
Wolfy
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